Intel’s Sandy Bridge Chipset Has a Flaw 2:54It appears that Intel has discovered some weak transistors in the Sandy Bridge 6 Series chipset that can cause SATA to degrade in performance over the life of the chip. This is more noticeable if you are using more than two connected drives. SATA 3 ports are not affected, but Intel has stopped the sale of all 6-Series boards – from every manufacturer… The cost to them? $1 Billion. Ouch.

Egypt Turns Off The Internet 10:21Amidst a bunch of political unrest, Egypt has decided to turn off the Internet and yesterday the last ISP to hold out had to flip the switch. It is interesting to see what Google, Twitter and others are doing to help get information out. Also there are things called phone lines that still work to spread information. Probably more people are protesting in the streets now that they can’t surf the web. Crazy stuff. More tech-slanted information over here at ComputerWorld.

Canada Gets a Dose of Metered Internet 20:09We’ve been pretty fortunate in Canada to have some “unmetered” plans – and some pretty good bandwidth caps on our metered plans. That is changing. Legislation is being passed that makes “last mile” companies comply with bandwidth regulations and this will certainly limit the amount of data allowed on a plan. Let’s home pricing changes as well and we pay less as we get less.

PS3 Firmware Hacked in Less Than a Day 29:45If you want proof that suing people for using your hardware to its potential and trying to lock down a hardware platform DOESN’T work, take a look at Sony. They hate open platforms and standards. Their latest firmware proves it – but still gets pWn3d in less than a day.

Max Payne 3 Is Coming – Jason Rejoices 33:02I loved Max Payne – the original game. It was ground-breaking in terms of visuals and gameplay. The second one was good, and it looks like if Max Payne 3 ever actually is released – it could be even better. There are new details on the game and I’m hoping it’s getting closer to reality.

Sony NGP Announced (PSP2) 35:20Nintendo is banking on 3D for their next handhelp gaming platform, while Sony is banking on some ridiculous hardware and a great screen, intuitive controls and good gameplay. I like the sound of that – but I’m not a fan of Sony. Still a 3G, platform for gaming sounds pretty cool.

Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego coming to Facebook 43:00Jason is a HUGE fan of Oregon Trail and in fact may “camp out” to be one of the first to play this classic game on Facebook. I’m afraid we may not get much out of him this next week between that and Carmen Sandiego… Stay tuned – and ready to block his facebook posts.

FCC Takes Steps To Free Up Wireless Spectrum 46:38The FCC is doing a “good deed” by freeing up some of the wireless spectrum that is currently licensed and sitting there basically dead and unused. This should give companies and large corporations more flexibility (and a Billion to the FCC) if this works out like they hope. In the end, better transmission rates and security are a win for everyone though.